


Three Times Dean Went Crazy and One Time Sam Did

by brightly_lit



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Gen, Hurt Sam Winchester, Hurt/Comfort, Insanity, Language, Non-Graphic Violence, Teenage Winchesters, Weechesters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-29
Updated: 2013-07-29
Packaged: 2017-12-21 17:50:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/903107
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brightly_lit/pseuds/brightly_lit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is about wee!Sam and teen!Dean and times when their messed-up lives pushed them too far--not a feel-good fic.</p><p>"Any time Dad laid into one of them like this, the other burned with vicarious shame; they always tried to pretend they weren’t listening to the other’s castigation."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Three Times Dean Went Crazy and One Time Sam Did

SAM

They’d had pretty fucked-up lives, Dean had to say. Sam was only ten, and he’d already seen some really fucked-up shit. There was the time the shtriga almost got him, when he was still really young. Dad had fussed over him so much after he saved him, the next day, Sam had stuck his tongue out at Dean and said, “Dad loves me best.” All Dean could think was, if it takes getting your life almost sucked out to be the favorite, you can keep it.

Then there was the time when Sam was six when Dad lost sight of them for a while and had reason to believe the shifter he was hunting was the maid at the motel where they were staying. She’d come into the room while Dad was gone; they couldn’t stop her, even though Dad told them not to let anyone in, no matter what. Dad had had to test them both to make sure it hadn’t replaced one of them with itself. Late that night in their room, Sam had stared at the bandage over where his father had cut his arm with a silver knife, and asked Dean quietly, “Have I been bad?”

Then there was the time just last fall when Sam was getting something out of the trunk to bring to the tent when they were camping and a ghoul came up behind him. It looked like Sam’s favorite teacher, which it must have eaten, or more likely, it had been Sam’s favorite teacher all along. Sam didn’t even know it was there. Dad saw it at the last second and shot it in the head, right over Sam’s head. From the look on his face, staring Dad’s gun down the barrel, Dean could tell Sam thought Dad had up and decided to blow him away. Then Dad tried to keep him away from the body, but Sam kept creeping around to stare at it. He asked all kinds of questions about what made it bad and what was so wrong with eating dead bodies if they didn’t kill anyone. He never seemed to get a satisfactory answer from Dad, and eventually he stopped asking.

So yeah, they’d seen some fucked-up shit. That wasn’t all of it by a long shot. Dean had been waiting all that time for it to take some kind of toll on Sammy, but he’d gone along okay up until now, so Dean finally decided it never would. Dean had picked him up at the elementary school and was walking him back to their tiny house on the bad side of town, when Sam piped up, “When’s Dad gonna be home?”

“Few days,” Dean said, like he always did.

“Oh. He’s supposed to talk to my teacher.”

Dean groaned. “What’d you do?”

“Nothing.”

“Then why’s she want to talk to him?”

“She’s ‘concerned.’”

“Did she send a note?”

“She sent a packet.” Sam stopped to rummage in his backpack. Dean kept one eye on the drug dealers and other sleazeballs who were watching them. Sam handed him the packet, and Dean had a look at it. ‘This is not normal,’ Sam’s teacher had written in large letters over a spectacularly bloody drawing featuring Sam (brown hair) and Dad (bigger, with brown hair) with Xs for eyes. Dad had been disemboweled; Sam was in pieces. Dean (blond hair) stood over them both, crying. The title of the drawing was “Where Will You Be in Five Years?” Dean blinked, then flipped to the next page in the packet, which was an essay about “What I Did Last Summer.” Dean cringed, and got a little pissed--Sam knew better than to tell people what really went on in their lives--but then he saw it was all fantastical, about unicorns and magic fruit and trips to Narnia and Mom coming home. The teacher’s note said Sam had sworn up and down it was factual. Dean kept flipping through the packet. It was all stuff like this. He and Dad had no idea, and they never would have, if they hadn’t come to this school three weeks ago and this teacher hadn’t taken it upon herself to ask what the hell was wrong with Sam. 

Dean didn’t know what to say, so he started with something small: the essay. “Why’d you, uh, write all this crap?” He showed it to Sam.

“She said I had to write about what I did last summer.”

“You didn’t do any of this shit.”

“Yes, I did!” Sam said shrilly.

“No. I took you to Plucky’s and we snuck into the pool in that nice neighborhood and I shop-lifted us all that candy--remember?--and Dad hunted a rugaru.”

“And a pegasus, and that talk-show host.”

Dean stared at him. What Sam must be talking about suddenly came back to Dean--the t.v. had been on, and Dad had been bitching about some conservative talk-show host, but he hadn’t said he would kill him! Sam had read a book that had a pegasus on the cover, but they didn’t actually exist, so Dad sure as hell wasn’t hunting one. “What the fuck, Sammy?” 

All Dean could think about was Dad, what Dad was going to say if he found out about this, what he would say to Dean, what he’d do to Sam. There was no telling what Dad would do. Nothing like this had ever happened before. He might sit Sam down and explain a few things, or he might yell at him (which wouldn’t help and would only make things worse). He might blame Dean. He couldn’t take him to a shrink because he couldn’t afford that. Maybe Dad would just cry. That had happened before, plenty of times. He’d probably get drunk more often.

By night, Dean had decided on a course of action. His teacher obviously thought Sam was crazy, but Dean knew he wasn’t crazy. Something had gone wrong somewhere, and it was up to Dean to figure out where and try to fix it before Dad came home. They talked, for hours. Dean thanked whatever was out there that no one else heard this conversation; they’d lock Sam up and throw away the key. Sam didn’t even know that things nobody had ever seen didn’t exist, but how would he know?, since Dad and Dean were always talking about monsters Sam had never seen, and almost all the ones he had seen looked just like regular people. “He only kills bad things,” Dean told him.

“We’re bad sometimes,” Sam said, a creepy far-away look coming into his eye. “Will he kill us?”

“No! He only kills things that aren’t human.”

“My teacher wasn’t bad.” The ghoul. Dean knew that must have done a number on Sam. “She never killed anybody. She was always nice.”

This was something Dean had grappled with himself. Not all of the non-human things they killed had ever actually done anything bad, but it didn’t matter; to Dean, the answer was clear-cut: if Dad said you killed it, you killed it. You got an earful if you balked when he wanted your help with a hunt. Dean was so glad Dad wasn’t here to hear any of this. “Well, I don’t know, but monsters have to die, so we kill them.”

“But ... how can you tell when something’s a monster or when it’s just a person?”

“Dad has ways of finding out. Like remember when he cut us with the silver? He was testing to make sure the shifter hadn’t changed to look like one of us.”

“Does Dad ... always check first?”

“ALWAYS,” Dean said firmly, and he saw relief come over Sam’s face, because he knew if Dean said it like that, it was true.

“But ... how do we know Dad’s not a monster? Because I’m pretty sure he changed into something else last year.”

Yeah, Dad had taken a turn for the worse last winter, drinking every day and snapping at them every time they opened their mouths. “He’s not a monster,” Dean said, but without the conviction he’d had a second ago. Sam was the logical one. Dean just tried not to think about this stuff. Maybe that was why this had happened to Sam: he thought so hard about it, it stopped making sense. Not much about their lives made sense, truth be told.

Anyway, Sam was starting to look more sane, like he had some solid foundation on which to build his understanding of reality now. Sam crawled under the covers. Dean followed suit. After the lights were off, Sam’s voice came to Dean under the covers, soft as a breath: “Dean, you’re the only person in this world I really know.” It was true; they never stayed in one place long enough to get to know someone else, and Dad wasn’t around that much. “You’re the only one I know isn’t a monster.”

 

DEAN I

Dean had suggested to Dad that it was time Sam started helping them out on hunts, knowing that if Sam could see how monstery some of these monsters really were, it would help even more. Even when the monsters were really bad, Sam didn’t like killing them, but Dean knew he’d get over that, just like he’d gotten over his squeamishness about killing animals for food. Still, Sam always complained about helping with a hunt, because there was always something he’d rather be doing, usually homework.

On this particular night, though, Sam just wouldn’t shut up about it. “Can’t you just do it?” Sam sulked from the backseat. They used to ride back there together all the time, but Dean started riding up front next to Dad when he turned thirteen or so, and Sam preferred to have the whole backseat to himself these days so he could spread out his books and school projects and try to work on them in the car.

Dad had some choice words for Sam then, about duty and responsibility and human lives. Dad could basically shred you with a sentence, cut you down until you felt like the lowest of the low. He all but never touched them; he didn’t have to. His words cut deeper than anything else ever could. Any time Dad laid into one of them like this, which was rare since they’d learned better than to push him this far, the other burned with vicarious shame; they always tried to pretend they weren’t listening to the other’s castigation, just like now, as Dean stared studiously out the window. What the hell was with Sam, though? Even now, he grumbled, “You can’t make me do this all the time.” 

“I can and I will,” Dad said coolly.

“I won’t do it. Sir.”

“You will do whatever the hell I tell you to do, Sam, is that clear?” Dad’s freakin’ Marine stuff. The kid was eleven.

The hunt was rough, taking them through thick brush that scratched every bit of exposed skin. Starting with a jolt when it came up behind him, Dean bruised his whole back jumping back against a tree, but then the thing disappeared again. Sammy gave himself a couple of good scrapes falling off a boulder. They finally cornered it against a cliff face. Dad missed, and Dean killed it as it made a last desperate lunge, nicking Sam before it went down. It happened so fast, neither Dad nor Dean saw exactly what happened, only that Sam was on the ground afterward, groaning.

“Thank God that’s over,” Dad said, still breathing hard, rolling it over with his foot to make sure it was really dead. “Well done, Dean. Come on, Sam.”

They headed for the car, but Sam didn’t follow, just stayed there on the ground, groaning. “He’s hurt!” Dean said, and ran to his side, or tried, but Dad stopped him.

“He’s faking. He’ll get up and follow us when he gets tired of laying in the dirt. Come on, Dean.”

The monster’s blow looked light--almost nonexistent--from where they were standing, but Dean knew Sam, and Sam didn’t fake. He just didn’t. “He’s not faking!”

“He didn’t want to come on this hunt. He’s trying to make a point. I’m not buying it. Let’s go.”

“No!”

“What?” Dad said sharply.

“No, sir.”

Dad stared at Dean for a second, then said, “Fine.” He went over to Sam, grabbed him by one arm, and started dragging him. Dean saw Sam scramble to his knees, giving a little yelp. It seemed clear to Dean that trying to crawl on his knees hurt just as much as letting himself be dragged; he let out a pitiful moan, writhing a little, as Dad kept going.

“Let him go!” said Dean. When Dad didn’t immediately obey, Dean ran up to him and shoved him. Dad dropped Sam to shove Dean back. The tensions of the hunt were still high; they were both still on edge. They stared at each other in the moonlight. Dean couldn’t believe he’s just shoved his dad, and he could tell Dad couldn’t believe he had, either. Whatever deep shit he’d just gotten himself in, Dean couldn’t afford to think about right now; he dropped to his knees beside Sam and gently lifted him. “Sammy? What happened? Where’d he get you?”

Dad made a disgusted noise and stalked off toward the car. He could still seriously think Sam was faking, after all this? But Dad wasn’t around enough to know Sam like Dean did. Sam was far too honorable to fake, no matter what he thought it might get him, and he had enough respect for the family business to take his duty to it seriously, however he might complain. “Sammy?” Dean whispered. No answer but frantic breathing. He picked up his brother and carried him to the car, where he held him protectively all the way home as Sam drifted in and out of consciousness. Still convinced Sam was faking, Dad refused to take him to the hospital that night. Dean wondered if he would wake up next to his brother’s cold body in the morning, so he stayed up all night watching Sam breathe, listening to Dad’s soft snores from the next room. Rolling over, Dean felt that he hadn’t even taken his gun out of his waistband when they got home. He took it out to set it on the bedside table and stopped, looking at it, feeling its warmth in his hand, warmed by the heat of his body. 

They lived off the grid. Dad boasted that he was assumed dead by the government. They had no friends to speak of, and most of Dad’s former hunter buddies weren’t speaking to him. If Dean cocked his gun, walked into the next room, and fired a single bullet, no one would ever know. He would take Sam to the hospital, where they would fix him. After that, he and Sam could move on, live real lives, the kind of lives they actually wanted instead of the one they’d been forced into. Sam would never go crazy again, he would never be left face-down in the dirt by his own father again. He would be all right.

Dean flinched. Had he seriously just been contemplating patricide? He tossed the gun down on the bedside table, suddenly almost afraid of it, and settled down deeper next to Sam, who was a pale bluish grey, breathing shallowly. Would Dad take Sam to the hospital in the morning? He had to, didn’t he? What if he didn’t? What if he said they didn’t have the money? What if he said Sam had better either toughen up or die trying? Dean didn’t think Dad would be like that, but he never thought he’d leave Sam groaning in the dirt, either. His eyes strayed to the gun again. None of this seemed real. It couldn’t be real. He didn’t know where reality had gone, but it couldn’t be this.

In the morning, they took Sam to the hospital.

 

DEAN II

Sam was trying to study by flashlight in the back of the car on the way home from a hunt. He was twelve. Dad had them both out ’til all hours every single night this week, helping him kill every last vampire in a nest that had scattered with their first attack. Dean just ditched the first couple of classes of the day to sleep in, but it was almost the end of the year and Sam was all excited about graduating from elementary school. It was kind of ridiculous, Dean knew--it didn’t count as “graduation” since you didn’t get a usable diploma or anything--but he’d been excited about it for weeks ... or, well, in another way, since first grade. So Sam kept going to school, and got tireder every day that week, but he doggedly kept at studying, falling asleep with his face in a school book pretty much every night.

It was quiet in the car, since Sam was studying and Dean was pretty tired, too, when Dad said, “Nest’s clear. I got wind of a werewolf in Central City and it’s almost full moon. We’re leaving tonight, so pack your stuff as soon as you get home. You boys can sleep in the car.”

Dean glanced back at Sam in the backseat, saw his stricken expression. “I graduate next week!” said Sam.

“You’ll have to do it in the new place.”

They’d been here six weeks, longer than they almost ever stayed anywhere, long enough for Sam to form an attachment, though Dean didn’t allow himself to do the same anymore. “They probably won’t let him join a school for three days just to graduate,” Dean said carefully. “Sir.”

“Well then, consider this graduation, Sam,” said Dad. “Congratulations.”

Dean saw it all on Sam’s face: the pain, the outrage, the fury, the disbelief. Everything he’d worked so hard for practically his whole life, gone, just like that, all because Dad was on the trail of another hunt. Dean never challenged Dad, especially not after that awful night when he shoved him, so even he was surprised to hear himself say, “That’s not fair.”

Dad’s voice dripped with scorn. “No, you know, what’s not fair is that people are about to lose their lives in Central City, Dean.” 

Dean looked back anxiously at Sam, at his contorted face. Sam didn’t say anything because Dad’s logic was infallible and because it wouldn’t do any good for him to argue, anyway. “I get that, but Dad ... this is your son.” Sam looked at Dean like he wondered what the hell he was doing, talking to Dad like that.

Dad’s expression got that cold look it did when he was feeling contemptuous. He never eased up on himself; he wouldn’t stand for it in his kids, either. “Well, if my son thinks his elementary-school graduation is more important than someone’s life, I’ve done something wrong.”

Dean looked away. How could you argue with that? He looked back at Sam and saw something come over his face, this distant calm, this indifference, like ... like something was breaking inside him.

“Stop the car,” said Dean.

Their dad laughed. “What?”

“Stop the car right now,” Dean said coolly.

“I don’t know what you think you’re doing, Dean, but--”

“Stop the fucking car right now!”

Their dad glanced at Dean and without another word pulled over to the side of the road in the forest. Dean got out of the car, wrenched open Sam’s door, and motioned him out. “C’mon, Sam.” Sam looked up at him, bewildered, looking very small there, curled up hopelessly in the back seat.

Their dad got out of the car and slammed the door hard. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“Home, so Sam can graduate. You can kill that fucking werewolf yourself. We can walk.”

“Get in the goddamn car, Dean.” Dad was fast losing patience, which was never good. Dad’s patience was tightly controlled, and you wanted to keep it that way.

“It’s okay,” Sam said softly.

Dean yanked Sam out of the car onto his feet; he was still little enough that that was easy to do. Dean picked up his book and flashlight himself and started heading down the road, pulling Sam along with him. Dean heard Dad come up behind them, footsteps hard and furious. Dean spun around when he was on their heels and grabbed him by his jacket. Too quietly for Sam to hear, Dean said, “You touch us and I will lay you out and leave you here by the side of the road, so help me, you son of a bitch.” Dean was sixteen and already taller than Dad. Dad may have taught them to fight, but Sam and Dean had been honing their already considerable skills sparring with each other all their lives, and they were better than him now--way better. Dean could see in Dad’s eyes that he knew it, too. 

“All right Dean,” Dad said thinly, “but if people die this full moon, that’s all on you.”

Dean nodded calmly, letting him go. If that’s what it took to keep Sammy whole, he would accept it.

 

DEAN III

Lisa smiled at Dean from the passenger seat, stroking her hand down his head. Dean came back to himself from wherever his thoughts had gone, far, far away. “You okay, baby?” she asked sweetly.

Dean put on that semi-convincing smile he’d perfected over the last year. “Yeah,” he said emptily. “I’m great.”


End file.
